[NLRS] June contest from EN37ed

[Bill Davis Jr]

  Good morning all you blurry eyed NLRSers. Well I would assume some are more blurry eyed than others. 

  Thanks to those that looked north and involved all of us up this way in your contest activities over the weekend. I anticipated this contest much like Christmas, but was disappointed when Santa appeared to have delivered mostly "coal" in my stocking. The "coal" was the 6m Es that pretty much wiped out the activity on bands above 6m. (You see it is those tropo and Es QSOs ABOVE 6m that are my "Christmas".)

  I endured 6m operation Saturday grumbling to myself that I wish it would go away where the fun could start and the "hard physical labor" could be over. That was very much the attitude I operated with Saturday and at days end was not in a "Christmas spirit" frame of mind. Mostly I "hunted and pounced" with the K3 /Softrock running Power SDR via HamRadio Deluxe, enjoying the 6m bandscope. This is not the way to make points.... but I had little interest in aggravating my TV dependent neighbor with long strings of front-end overload. In retrospect I wish I had ran a few strings anyway......

  Saturday 6m Es activity was mostly limited to the SE US and a very few grids to South and SW. Very little elsewhere, nothing to the NE or far west at all. Same limited grids all day long. Conditions were more stable than on Sunday, however. I had more cases of longer calls for single Qs on Saturday it seemed. Sundays Es followed the same pattern, but much more unestablished with often short burts of signals, some times too short for a complete exchange. The only short distance stuff I heard was On Sunday with southern Illinois, Tennessee and Arkansas being heard loudly and for prolonged periods. Only one 2m Es signal observed and was worked, K5YG EM50 at 02:11z Sat evening. Brock W6GMT also heard him, but the sig was gone before Brock could work him. (Brock is 28miles north of me) I had the 2m SoftRock bandscope watching  144.180-144.270 the entire contest period.

  The handful of requested meteor scatter skeds that cost me a nights sleep were mostly a bust. Horrid meteors. VERY odd to me after all the years of meteor scatter. In some cases, not one ping and in other cases just bits and pieces. I didn't hear a single real GOOD ping or burst in any of the 4 1/2 hours that I ran! So when Pat (XYL) asked how it was going Sunday morning when she got up, I was not real pleased with the previous 18hrs of effort.

  Sunday conditions above 6m didn't seem to be too bad most of the time. Some really nice sounding 432 signals, which is not always the case. I worked Jon for 3 very difficult grids on 10Ghz with headings over local high terrain that I often consider impossible. One QSO was easy and the other two were VERY challenging. The easy one with a tad of rainscatter and the others by raising the dish elevation above the terrain and digging in the noise augmented by the Rocky waterfall reading CW characters too weak to hear clearly. 

  In the end the rovers and diehards "saved Christmas" and above 6m was enjoyed to some degree on Sunday. 63 or my 390 contacts (16%) were rover QSOs. Of those rover QSOs Jon ZQ was worked 35 times, Bud and Carol 12 times, John VPJ 5 times and DX rovers 11 times (all 6m). Percentage of QSOs 67% 6m, 12% 2m, 5% 222, 7% 432, 2 1/2% 902, 2 1/2% 1296 and 1 1/2% 10GHz.

 

  Final Results::
 
  6m  271 QSOs  113 Grids
  2m   47 QSOs   18 Grids
222    19 QSOs   10 Grids
432    28 QSOs   11 Grids
902     9 QSOs    6 Grids
1296   10 QSOs    7 Grids 
10Ghz   6 QSOs    5 Grids
 
390 QSOs 170 Grids Total  83,810 Points

  Highlights (any Q above 6m :-) ) working Alris W7XU on 6,2,222 in the last 6min of the contest. Talking to 
Tom K8CLA for the first time in 40yrs after he left the Grand Forks AirBase. Great visit with Wally W0PHD on 
2m. Any 10Ghz QSO (Thanks Jon and Gary), Those great Rover QSOs, Jon, Mel, Carol, John and the DXers.
The 2m Es is always fun too.

  In the end, my second best June contest and my 3rd best overall contest. If I had "gotten into" working AT 6m
Saturday instead of just working it, the score could have been better.

  Hope you enjoyed the contest and/or activity. I enjoyed it, especial the "Christmas" part ;-) 

73  Bill  K0AWU